More Fit by 50: Walking brings out the weird in a guy

Having put in a large flower bed in our front yard this spring, I have been paying much more attention to gardens during my recent walks. Neighborhood residents along St. Paul Boulevard between Navarre Road and Collingwood Drive in the city, established a &quot;pocket park&quot; across the road from the entrance to Seneca Park. Very cool.(Photo: CHAD ROBERTS / Staff photographer)Buy Photo

One positive/negative about walking more than 2,000-miles over a 20-month period is that you learn new things about yourself.

What have I learned, you ask? Well, mainly that yes, I really am that weird.

There is really no way to sugarcoat it: a 51-year-old person who drags himself out in all kinds of weather to walk around Irondequoit, New York, USA has some issues. And worse yet, more keep popping up the longer these walks go on.

Take for example, carrying a water bottle. I hate carrying one with me on walks. Why? A water bottle throws my balance out of whack.

Who knew I even had any balance?

On a walk of 10 miles or less, this is no problem. On my 18-mile walk earlier this spring it was a BIG problem.

"Mommy, why is that man in the red shorts drinking out of our sprinkler?"

Only thing was, the sprinkler was a mirage. (It was not a good day.)

Things have gotten to the point where my morning can be partially spoiled if the pedometer app on the iPhone does not work perfectly. That is just not right.

Quite likely the strangest obsession of all, however, is making sure that I physically connect all the dots on the streets where I walk. I have doubts I can even explain this one in a coherent fashion.

When I first moved from the treadmill to walking outside, I would take a route that might be 3 or 4 miles by the time I was through, and think that was pretty good. And it was, based on where I had started in February 2013 (222 pounds, profoundly out of shape). At some point, though, it dawned on me that I could add to my mileage significantly by walking up and down every side street I came across while walking my original route. The bonus would be the additional mileage while not really being any farther from home.

So, for a while, each court or cul-de-sac I came to, I would walk around it. Each side street, I would walk up one side and down the other. And truth be told, the mileage did jump when the side-street jaunts began to add up. The 4-mile walks became 6-mile walks, then 7 and so on.

But walking the side streets opened me up to more weirdness. Say I reached the end of a side street, and another side street intersected with the first side street. I started feeling like I was cheating if I did not walk up and down that side street too.

Like I was letting somebody down.

Now I am at the point where I don't feel right if I don't connect all the dots on the side streets. It is like a giant game of geometry, and I have been terrible at math my entire life.

Up one side street, down the other side, oops, there's a side I haven't closed off, let's get that while I'm here. If any person watched my walks, they would call the authorities.

That might not be such a bad idea.

Notes: I have walked 115 miles for the month of June through Thursday and have reached 732 miles for the year. That would take me to Knoxville, Tenn., or Peoria, Ill. After walking 243 miles in May, which was too much, I have pretty much settled into a routine of walking four times per week. Each walk is a minimum of 10 miles, usually between 10 and 11, so that means about 42 miles per week.